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Adolf Hitler claimed to be a Christian, but would it be wrong to say he most certainly was not a Christian?

Full Question

Adolf Hitler claimed to be a Christian, but would it be wrong to say he most certainly was not a Christian?

Answer

So far as we know, Adolf Hitler was validly baptized in the Catholic Church. That means he was a Catholic. Baptism is, literally, a new birth that makes the person a Christian in his very being, no matter how well or how poorly he lives out his faith. Just as physical conception means that a person will always be a human person with inherent human dignity, no matter how detestable the crimes he may choose to commit, so a baptized person, no matter how evil he becomes, remains a Christian. In Hitler’s case though, and in the cases of those Christians who also entirely abandon the faith into which they were baptized, it can be said that they no longer believe in Christianity and that their theological beliefs cannot be considered Christian. If they completely abandon their Christian faith, then they are apostates (cf. CCC 2089), though objectively they remain among the baptized.

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Faith of the Early Fathers, Volumes 1,2 and 3In this three-volume set the early church fathers speak for themselves. Readers will be surprised to see how much these men of antiquity sound like the orthodox Catholic leaders of today.Volume I covers the Pre-Nicene and Nicene eras Volume II covers the Post-Nicene era through St. Jerome and Volume III covers St. Augustine to the end of the patristic period.This set is a concrete reminder of the awesome majesty of the universal church, transcending geographic location, culture, and even time itself.

"Let us then not be ashamed to confess the Crucified. Be the cross our seal, made with boldness by our fingers on our brow and in everything; over the bread we eat and the cups we drink, in our comings and in goings out; before our sleep, when we lie down and when we awake; when we are travelling, and when we are at rest."

~ St. Cyril of Jerusalem in his "Catecheses" (xiii, 36), on the sign of the cross, a practice familiar to Christians in the second century and which had passed into a gesture of benediction by the fourth century, as many quotations from the Fathers show